Wednesday, September 30, 2015

This report from last Saturday has people laughing out loud across the country. You have to ask why the raccoon didn’t tear the guy up when he first caught him. Well, he probably did, but he was drunk, so that part didn’t get mentioned in the report.

The thing is, it’s not true. The watermark logo is JTTOTS, which designates military humor. Yet enough people believed it to make the debunking itself worth news. People wanted this to be true because it paints such a funny picture. Expect to see the vignette incorporated into some movie screenplay before a year passes. (via reddit)

Stuart Crout plays “The Final Countdown” on a Kazookeylele, a hybrid instrument the likes of which I have never seen before. The nerdery is cranked to eleven here. Several years later, Crout was on Britain’s Got Talent, but not for long. (via reddit)

Introducing VODER (Voice Operation DEmonstratoR) from Bell Labs. This device was demonstrated at the World’s Fair in New York in 1939 and at the Golden Gate International Exposition. Pretty amazing for the time, huh? (via Everlasting Blort)

Award-winning photographer Magnus Wennman traveled all to photograph refugees from Syria and the Middle East. A series of his pictures showing where children sleep is accompanied by their stories. (via Metafilter)

Chaos Life has the most thorough and hilarious profiles of their cats. Meet Peter, Konstantin, and Jiji.

Screen Junkies does it again, with an honest trailer for a movie that hasn’t even been released on DVD and Blu-ray yet. That may be why these clips are so fuzzy -is it it just me?

The second Avengers film didn’t quite make the splash the first movie did, even after years of hype. They do have a point about the unbelievable requirements of Age of Ultron in regards to the rest of the Marvel movie universe. No matter, if you liked it, you’ll like it even after seeing the Honest trailer version. (via Tastefully Offensive)

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Burger Fiction brings us a supercut of camera pushes -shots where the camera zooms in on our hero (or villain) to make him/her appear more epic. With appropriately epic music. (via Tastefully Offensive)

Last week a popular post at Jezebel told us Fall is the Worst Season. It poetically compares autumn to the decline of life, which overlooks two things: first, the decline of life is when it has its fullest value and grows the sweetest, just like fruit. Second, autumn comes around every year, and if we are lucky, we get to enjoy many of them. Autumn happens to be my favorite season, and I don’t mind to share the many reasons why fall is the best.

1. Apples

Your local farmers market and grocery stores are full of apples of all kinds. Just a few years ago, they’d all be red delicious or golden delicious apples, and unless you had your own tree, there wasn’t much choice. But consumer demand led to an explosion in available apple varieties with different tastes and uses. Granny Smith apples are tart for making pies, while Honeycrisp apples are the kind you want to sink your teeth into. This autumn, you should try a few types you’ve never had before.

2. Turning Leaves

Matthew Paulson via Flickr // CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Every fall, I get a sudden urge to make a quilt. I’ve made maybe a dozen patchwork quilts in my life, back when I had a 9 to 5 job and watched TV at night, sitting behind my quilting frame. The inspiration I get this time of year comes from looking at the mountains, with their magnificent splotches of red, yellow, and orange along with patches of evergreens. The urge to start cutting fabric lasts until the mid-November rainstorm that brings the rest of the leaves down.

3. Falling Leaves

Raking leaves might seem like a chore, but when you get children involved, it can turn into a party. Who can rake the most leaves up the fastest? Who gets to jump into the pile first? Don’t take too long to decide, because the dog will take the first leap is he gets a chance! The oaks, walnuts, and maple trees that shade the yard are the reason I have to arrange an overflow bin for compost material in the fall.

4. Football

For fans of American football, the start of the school year means Little League football, high school football, college football, and the NFL. Pick your poison or enjoy them all! You don’t even have to be a football fan to have good memories of your team taking the field. You might just like tailgate parties, and who can blame you? For me, football reminds me of high school, which meant marching in the band, looking forward to the homecoming dance, the one powder puff game I actually played for charity, and the night I met that cute guy from another school. Actually, that happened a few times.

Above Average is making a series of videos called Criminal Crimes, which pokes fun at police dramas. It stars the sketch group Chess Club Comedy. This episode takes place in the morgue, as our detectives examine a murder victim. The coroner needs to get out more, maybe see a movie or two. I know she’d enjoy Thor. (via The A.V. Club)

Monday, September 28, 2015

How would you rate me on a scale of one to ten? That’s a question you should never, ever ask. It’s akin to asking if these pants make my butt look big. You don’t want honesty, you want validation. But you might get honesty instead. (via reddit)

Whether you call them migrants or refugees, they are all looking for a home. John Oliver explains what’s happening in Europe on Last Week Tonight. The very end of this is the best part. Especially if you are Najeem Mustafa.

This guy was gassing up his car when he saw a spider. He wanted to kill it. The first weapon he thought of was his lighter. Imagine what happened then.

The gas station clerk immediately hit the pump cutoff button and called the fire department. The guy who started it all (whose name has not been released) grabbed a fire extinguisher and put out the flames. It could have been so much worse. Strangely, the only thing destroyed in the fire was the gas pump. The car was barely touched, and no one was injured. (via Arbroath)

Devon Meadows set up a camera to see what goes on when he’s not home, particularly how much his new puppy Chazz barks. That’s how he came to witness an epic shutdown by his cat, Grayscale. Cats know when to be intimidating, and the puppy was certainly put in his place. (via Neatorama)

Saturday, September 26, 2015

If so many people are tuning into the Republican debates only to see Donald Trump in action (which is what he claims), then an all-Trump debate would garner the highest ratings of all! Ellen Degeneres has the right idea. If there were an all-Trump 24/7 channel, some people would tune in all day -while others would wait for the highlights to hit YouTube. (via Boing Boing)

From the Found Footage Festival, we get a supercut of sexual harassment employee training videos from the ‘90s. The re-enactments are cheesy and get laughs, but the things they illustrate were just another day at the office back in the day. (via Everlasting Blort)

The cast of the 1979 film The Warriors reunited on September 13th for The Warriors Festival in Coney Island. How did that go? The actors arrived by the Q train, of course, recreating the journey in the movie in which they left the city gang wars to return to their home turf on Coney Island. Rolling Stone followed along with cameras. It was a little different this time around. For one thing, the subway cars are no longer covered in graffiti. There was no turnstile-jumping, of course. And along the way, they met fans of the movie and even modern day gang members! See more videos of the event at Rolling Stone. (via mental_floss)

Friday, September 25, 2015

Mystery Science Theater 3000 takes on the worst movie ever made, Manos: The Hands of Fate. Read about the making of the film, how it was lost, found, and restored, and the fight over the rights to it, at Playboy. (via Metafilter)

Avery is out fishing with her dad with her pink Barbie fishing pole. Not only does she catch a fish, it’s a 5-pound, 20 inch bass! And she did it all by herself. Father and daughter will remember this catch for the rest of their lives. (via reddit)

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Eugene Bostick has a soft heart for dogs. He’s taken in countless unwanted dogs and gave them a forever home. And to give them a little extra fun, he takes them on a train ride! He built the train out of plastic barrels and pulls it with his tractor. The dogs love it. (via Neatorama)

“Activewear” is the marketing term for sports or exercise clothing. Everyone wears activewear, but few are actually active. There are two basic kinds of activewear: the body-hugging yoga pants and sports bras that show off one’s physique, figure, or lack thereof, and the loose sweats good for warmth and comfort. Young people who want to show off their bodies and look like they work out, and we older folks just want chafe-free covering. The video is aimed at girls, but we all know guys do it, too. This music video was created by the Van Vuuren Bros for the TV show Skit Box. (via Tastefully Offensive)

Imagine tootling along in your car when this happens. This was on Red Hill Avenue in Irvine, California. The local paper had the story a bit later. It was a Piper Cherokee with some kind of equipment failure that prompted an emergency landing on the street. No one was injured, and the plane was not damaged during the landing.

Sherlock Holmes may say “I have a theory that the murderer may be someone in this room.” The way he’s using the word “theory” isn’t the way the word is used in science. The words “fact” and “hypothesis” and “law” suffer from the same difference in perception and meaning between scientists and laypersons.

Joe Hanson, Ph.D. of the PBS Digital Studios channel It’s Okay to Be Smart explains the way science uses these words. Understanding the difference is one thing, explaining it to someone else is hard. Hanson does a pretty good job, but it will be much easier for us to send someone the video than to explain it the way he does. (via Digg)

You may think this is a silly concept, but as the video goes on, you learn that these women grew up during hard times and never got the chance to play dress-up or fantasize about the royal life. They are cute and sassy and deserve some silliness in their lives. (Thanks, Ricky Sans!)

Honest Gil for President! He’s got the formula down to the last detail.
Archaeologists Unearth Civil War Refuge for Escaped Slaves. http://mentalfloss.com/article/68706/archaeologists-unearth-civil-war-refuge-escaped-slaves

The 1943 song “You’ll Never Know” was always special to Laura and Howard Serena. She sang it to him as he left for World War II. She sang it to herself for comfort while he gone to war. They sang it together at their 50th anniversary party. At family gatherings, they would sing it to each other, alternating verses. Laura is 93 years old now, and blind. Howard is 92 and uses a wheelchair. When Howard visited her hospice room, he sang the song to her again. Their granddaughter Erin Solari recorded the moment. Things have changed a little since then.

She said the response to the video, which was first posted on Facebook, was an “outpouring of love [which] lifted everyone's spirits” and eventually convinced the hospice staff that she was well enough to go home to spend her final days with her husband.

Monday, September 21, 2015

The new song from King Luan http://kingluan.com/ comes just in time for the ramp up to Halloween. It features both our favorite vampire, Count Dracula, and our favorite mad scientist, Nikola Tesla. (Thanks, Craig Clark!)